Adamsville

How Adamsville began

Adamsville is a small village in Salem Township, Muskingum County. Mordecai Adams entered the land in the northwest quarter of section seven and, in 1832, hired surveyor William Beaver to lay out the town, which he named Adamsville for himself; the 1882 county history does not mention President John Quincy Adams as an alternative source of the name. The township itself was settled two decades earlier, in 1810, by William Denison, whose house is the village's National Register listing. It has had a post office since 1837 and incorporated in 1864, with David Richardson as first mayor. Like many small Muskingum County villages, Adamsville peaked in the late nineteenth century -- 335 residents in 1890 -- and has since settled to a population well under half that.

Platted 1832, incorporated 1864, by Mordecai Adams, who entered the land and hired surveyor William Beaver to lay out the town.

Where the name comes from

The 1882 county history states plainly that Mordecai Adams laid out the town in 1832 and named it Adamsville for himself, with no mention of any connection to President John Quincy Adams. Wikipedia records both this explanation and one that honors President John Quincy Adams.

Before the town

No source found describes Native American villages, trails, mounds, or specific encounters at Adamsville itself, and the 1882 county history explicitly notes the absence of any local record from before 1810. It does record, second-hand, that Colonel Angus McDonald marched from Virginia in 1774 against the Shawnee town of Wakatomika near present-day Dresden -- a county-wide event, not a Salem Township site. Nothing found ties the county's wider Native history to Adamsville specifically.

Timeline

1. 1810 — William Denison, from Massachusetts, becomes the first actual settler in what is now Salem Township, locating on the northeast quarter of section fifteen; his house, later occupied by his son William S. Denison, is the only National Register listing associated with Adamsville.
2. 1810 — Jesse Williams, who came with Denison, marries Denison's daughter Lucy -- the township's first recorded marriage.
3. 1811 — The New Hope Evangelical Lutheran congregation is organized by the Rev. Anthony Weyer (the 1882 history gives 1811) and builds its first church in 1817 on the site of the Lutheran cemetery.
4. 1812 — William Denison builds the first frame house in the township, on his farm, and plants the first orchard.
5. 1816 — Catherine Gaumer, wife of Jacob Gaumer, is the first death recorded in Salem Township and the first burial in the Lutheran graveyard.
6. 1817 — The first schoolhouse is built on lot 37 of the school land and school opens in December with Abraham Smith as teacher.
7. 1818 — The Salem Baptist Church is organized October 10 by the Rev. Amos Mix and the Rev. Henry Pringle, with Mordecai Adams and his wife Hannah among the members; its hewed-log church is built in 1822 just east of the site of Adamsville.
8. 1819 — Salem Township is organized (previously part of Highland Township); Joseph Stiers is elected its first Justice of the Peace and serves until 1837.
9. 1832 — Mordecai Adams, having entered the land, hires surveyor William Beaver and lays out the town of Adamsville; Dr. Jacob Reasoner becomes the first resident, his house later serving as the post office.
10. 1835 — Postmaster Jared Cone is appointed and the post office is fixed permanently in Adamsville, after having been held near town by Jonathan Starkey since 1827 and briefly by Henry Bainter of Monroe Township.
11. 1837 — A post office called Adamsville begins operation under that name.
12. 1840 — The first Methodist class forms, led by the Rev. Thomas Ruckle, and builds a frame church, 40 by 56 feet, at Adamsville in 1842 for $1,500.
13. 1864 — Adamsville is incorporated as a village, with David Richardson as first mayor and G. W. Shoemaker, J. W. Stiers, and A. P. Baker as the first Council.
14. 1880 — The Muskingum Normal School, begun by Prof. E. Spencer, holds its first six-week session from July 19 with ninety-one students, in the Adamsville public schools.
15. 1890 — The village reaches its recorded population peak of 335 residents.
16. 1982 — The William Denison House is listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 29.
17. 2020 — The village's population is recorded at 140 (2023 estimate: 137).

Stories

A blaze in the wood, a century before the settlers

Sutherland Stiers, a longtime resident living a mile south of Adamsville, told the county historians that in 1868 he cut down a large white oak tree for fence rails and found, buried within its trunk, a series of ax-marks stacked one above the other -- the kind of blaze cut to mark a trail or boundary. He and his neighbors carefully counted the tree's growth rings outward from the marks: one hundred and sixteen, which set the date of the cutting at 1752, twelve years before Bouquet's expedition into Ohio and earlier still than Braddock's. The marks, they judged, could not have been made with a tomahawk, but looked like the work of an ax such as Americans used. Who made them, and why, nobody in 1882 could say; the story survives only because a curious farmer happened to fell the right tree.

Named for himself, not a president

Mordecai Adams entered the northwest quarter of section seven and, in 1832, hired surveyor William Beaver to lay out a town on the site, naming it Adamsville after himself. Dr. Jacob Reasoner was the first to build and occupy a house there, and that house later became the village post office. A second addition followed from a Wheeler survey, and Jared Cone, who became postmaster in 1835, laid out still more additions as the town grew. The village was incorporated in 1864 with David Richardson as its first mayor. Later writers have sometimes suggested the town was instead named for President John Quincy Adams, but the fullest contemporary account of its founding does not mention the president at all.

Named for Salem, Massachusetts: the township around Adamsville

Adamsville stands in Salem Township, which was a piece of Highland Township when that township was ten miles square. In July 1819 the Muskingum County commissioners set off Salem, five miles square. The 1882 county history says the name was taken from Salem, Massachusetts, because a number of the early settlers came from that region. The first settlers, led by William Denison of Massachusetts in 1810, were joined by Germans such as the Gaumers, Shroyers and Shurtzes, who organized the New Hope Lutheran church by 1811. Peter Livingood built the first mill about 1814 or 1815, when the area was still Highland Township. Joseph Stiers, elected the first Justice of the Peace in 1819, held office until 1837, and township elections moved to Adamsville in 1846.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · archive.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Muskingum County Water - Se100% of residentsMuskingum River buried valley aquifer (wells near Duncan Falls)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2019: county board of elections.

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-06-17

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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